I created the Brutalist Mannequins series in 2020, during one of the darkest mental health periods of my life. At the time, I was coming out of a six-month breakdown that began in early 2019. It was the result of four decades of living with anxiety and depression. The series came from a need to make sense of the chaos. To pull something real from everything unraveling inside me.
At first, I believed I was only telling that story.
The breakdown. The rebuilding. The fight for clarity.
And in a lot of ways, I was.
But sometime in 2021, during the early stages of divorce proceedings, I looked at the work again. I really looked at it. And something else surfaced.
Unintentionally, and without even being fully aware of it at the time, I had also told the story of the end of my 12-year relationship.
It was all there. The unraveling. The silence. The resentment. The longing. The slow emotional separation that started long before anything legal was in motion. My subconscious had put it all on the canvas before I had the language to explain it to myself.
Recently, I came across a post by @exlawyernft. It wasn’t about me, but it might as well have been. Their words hit hard. They spoke about how the right partner lifts, grounds, and holds you through the worst. And how the wrong one can quietly pull you apart, piece by piece.
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That post didn’t show me anything new. I'm well past grieving what was gone. The post just reminded me of something my ex used to say:
“There’s a reason and a season.”
She said it when things ended. Projects. Friendships. Even people. It was her way of finding meaning in the fall.
And I think she was right.
But I also think there’s a reason and a season for truth to arrive.
Sometimes it takes months. Sometimes years.
Sometimes the art knows before you do.
I later added two more pieces to the series in 2022, just as the divorce was finalized. One of them was called Pleasure (SuperRare). It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t triumphant. But it was honest. It marked a quiet return to myself. Something more grounded. More whole.
Now in 2025, I’m sitting with all of it.
Not trying to rewrite the past. Not trying to make it neater than it was.
Just reflecting on what this series became, and what it helped me survive.
"I don't feel guilty about any of my pleasures" - Adwoa Aboah
I talked more about that in a 2023 podcast interview with The Angels’ Wing. It was one of the first times I publicly opened up about what the series really meant, including how the mannequins became a way to safely express myself when words weren’t enough.
Most of the mannequins in the series represent me, especially the female figures. I’ve always felt more connected to my feminine energy, and when I need to express something deeply emotional, that’s who shows up in the work.
If you’re curious about the deeper story behind Brutalist Mannequins, how I moved from hiding in surrealism to expressing more openly, or why I continue working with the mannequin form today, you can listen here:
🎙 Space #33 – Chat with Eric Rhodes, an artist in search of himself
